NEW YORK (AP) — Fresh out of a Manhattan courtroom, Donald Trump walked to a New York City bodega where a man was stabbed to death, a turning point for the former president as he juggles the role of a criminal defendant with that of a Republican. The challenger decided to call President Joe Biden a crime.
Trump stopped by Sanaa Practical Store, a small bodega that sells chips, soda and other snacks. Trump’s advisers said the former president and presumptive Republican nominee chose the store because it was the scene of a violent attack on an employee, a case that has drawn public denunciation from the prosecutor who has recently prosecuted him.
The stopover in Trump’s first campaign appearance since his hush money trial began made the presumptive GOP nominee the first former president in U. S. history to face trial for fraud.
Trump will be confined to the courtroom most of the time, severely restricting his movements and ability to campaign, fundraise and make calls, unlike Biden, who campaigned Tuesday in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state. Trump’s advisers responded by making plans for rallies and other political occasions on weekends and Wednesdays, the only day of the week when the court is not scheduled to convene. The plans also include more local appearances that Trump can make the day after the hearing recess.
For months, Trump has criticized Democratic-led cities, calling them crime-ridden and overrun by immigrants who have crossed the U. S. -Mexico border, even as violent crime has declined in the United States. With the close of his local crusade in Harlem, Trump has combined the familiar, if exaggerated, message with his promise to play hard to win his state despite his strong Democratic leanings.
“They need law and order. . . every week they get robbed,” Trump said of New York businesses, comparing their demands to what happens on the streets of New York. “Do you know where the crime is? It’s in the cellars.
Contrary to Trump’s rhetoric, FBI statistics show that violent crime declined overall nationally in 2023 after COVID-era spikes that began in 2020, when Trump was president. Crime has also declined in New York City since the peak of the pandemic.
However, in July 2022, Jose Alba, a store worker Trump visited in Hamilton Heights, a predominantly Hispanic community in Harlem, attacked 35-year-old Austin Simon. The resulting altercation, captured on surveillance video, ended with Alba fatally. Alba, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, arrested and charged with murder, however, the Manhattan district attorney dropped the charges a few weeks later, saying it might not turn out that Alba did not act in self-defense.
Ahead of her arrival, Trump’s crusader distributed documents to reporters criticizing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for his handling of the stabbing case, adding to the weeks Alba spent in prison on Rikers Island. Bragg oversees the process that is ultimately prosecuting Trump.
Bragg responded Tuesday after Trump’s plans were announced.
Simon’s death and Alba’s case were “settled just two years ago, and the fees were withdrawn after a thorough investigation,” he said. “U. S. Attorney La Bragg’s most sensible precedent remains the fight against violent crime, and the office has worked hand-in-hand. hand in hand with the NYPD to reduce overall crime in Manhattan.
The statistics cited by Bragg show a double-digit decline in homicides and shootings in Manhattan over the past two years.
Trump’s crusade also touted the closure of convenience stores as a position to highlight emerging costs for customers from the Biden presidency. Trump, however, ignored those talking points, focusing instead on his descriptions of crime in New York and claiming that the justice formula will allow us criminals to go free.
“They’re not going to get them back, they’re going after Trump,” he said.
The former president’s efforts in Harlem confirm his goal of crusading in his home state, even though New York remains predominantly Democratic. In 2020, Biden won more than 60% of the vote in the state and secured even wider margins in New York. he insists he can win New York in November anyway, and has even thought about holding rallies in the South Bronx and Queens, where the former president was born and raised, and even at Madison Square Garden.
“I can hire Madison Square Garden,” he said in an interview with Breitbart News. “It’s the beast’s abdomen, right?”
It would be a prohibitively expensive proposition, especially since his crusade has been struggling to save money while facing a fundraising deficit with Biden.
“We’re going to make a big play for New York,” Trump said Tuesday, of his pledge to put more states on the line.
At least Trump, a longtime prominent figure among New Yorkers, has shown that he can still dominate the city.
Throughout the afternoon, the crowd around the winery grew to a dozen as news spread that Trump was approaching scale. Barricades were erected along Broadway, between 139th and 140th streets, before Trump appeared. The terrace of the Mexican restaurant next door was filled with spectators, and the staff of a barbershop on the other side were piled up in front of its open door.
“Daddy Trump is coming, yes!” a passerby said before the former president arrived.
When Trump arrived, children climbed scaffolding surrounding nearby buildings to get a better view. Trump shook hands with others at police barricades before entering the bodega, where plexiglass separates consumers from the cash register.
“I love this city,” Trump told reporters after leaving the store. “We’re going to New York. “
Trump has argued that the continued influx of immigrants to the city, where he has grown his real estate empire and a tabloid staple, has made New Yorkers more willing to vote for him since his loss to Biden in 2020. The city is suffering in space. newcomers, many of whom are staying in city hotels.
“I think we have a chance. New York has replaced a lot of things in the last few years,” he recently told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo. “The other people in New York are angry. People who would never have voted for me because I’m a Republican. . . I think they’re going to vote for me.
He reiterated his view Tuesday, saying immigrants “come from prisons and intellectual institutions,” though there is no evidence to back up that claim, reminiscent of his 2015 speech to unveil his first presidential campaign.
Trump’s clients will count on constituents like Lesandra Carrión, a 47-year-old woman who lives in the community and came to see the former president when she learned he could treat her.
He said he didn’t agree with everything Trump says or does, but said “he’s telling the truth. “Carrión cited the increase in the migrant population and the strain on the city’s resources. “I think he’s going to make a difference,” she said of Trump.
As for his troubles at the courthouse on the far south side of Manhattan, Carrion is dismissive. “He’s going to get through that,” she said. We all make mistakes at the end of the day. But he is the fact and the light. I feel that God is in him.
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of Trump’s most sensible allies, predicted Monday that Trump would “make the most of this” trial in New York. “The New York Democrats, the ones who judge others and everybody,” he said, “are going to regret it. “
But not everyone was on board Tuesday.
Steven Kopstein, a 63-year-old neighborhood resident, expressed disgust at Trump’s scale and taunted Trump supporters as he drove through the crowd with his dog.
“You’re not welcome here,” Kopstein said of Trump, calling it ironic that the former president would oppose crime without delay after spending all day at a defendant’s table. “It’s done a lot of damage to immigrants and immigrants, and to this community. “It’s full of them. It’s crazy that those other people just don’t get it.
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Barrow reported from Atlanta. Associated Press editor Lisa Mascaro in Washington, D. C. , contributed.